ATS - A Thing of the Past

The applicant tracking system has been a popular tool in the HR industry and is being used by 90% of the organizations globally.

With the ATS assisting in recruitment processes and ‘screening’ a large number of applicants, the assumed dire need for it has been put on a pedestal for far too long. The idea that ATS changes or improves the hiring process by being an effort, cost, and time friendly is a thing of the past.

Over time the demands of recruitment in an organization have been evolving. The process of recruitment has become more complicated with the influx of talent that's pooling in. ATS overlooks this complexity, as it lacks efficient judgment and is unable to make impactful choices.

Why not ATS?

Losing out on worthy candidates

ATS dismisses profiles based on pre-set conditions, which results in losing out on worthy candidates. The technology behind ATS is opaque, dumb and primitive. These software have limitations as they screen candidates on the basis of keywords used in their CVs. Hence, candidates use online services that stuff their CVs with the right keywords and fool the ATS software. This also undermines the passive candidates who do not stuff their CVs with keywords and are ignored by the system. Therefore, the content in the candidate's CV becomes crucial and acts as a prime factor in the selection process, which leads to poor candidate experience. According to Gartner, “the best-in-class candidate experience improved pipeline (95% would reapply), increased referrals (97% would refer other candidates), and increased customer loyalty (88% would increase their purchases from the employer company).” These statistics show us that a good candidate experience is essential to find the right candidates. And ATS software only diminish the quality of candidate experience.

Manipulation in the hiring process

One of the most disturbing factors of ATS is the leakage of qualified and competent candidates. The ATS is blind to the 85% of passive job seekers. They rarely pass through the ATS as their CVs are not padded, formatted and/or fake. And it attracts 15% of the active job seekers who are likely to be dissatisfied, unemployed and frequent job hoppers. According to Forbes, studies conducted have shown that up to 75% of qualified applicants get rejected by the ATS because they can’t be read by the software.

Gamed Resumes get preferred

Candidates are compelled to pad their CV’s with keywords to get selected by the ATS, as an elaborate list of keywords will help a candidate’s resume get discovered. Keyword stuffing in a resume is an attempt to manipulate the ATS and get selected in the initial screening process. ATS looks for and filters profiles based on pre-set ideals and candidate personas that have been created. Under-qualified candidates that include various job description keywords will get higher visibility over higher-qualified candidates. It seems like ATS is less about finding top talent and more about wordplay, as the candidate’s bag-of-words has an important role to play.

Lacks intelligence

To dispose of under-qualified candidates and decrease the number of applicants, ATS requires a level of intelligence it lacks. ATS is the first filter in the recruitment process and it blindly filters CV’s and keywords, resulting in a fatal error in the output. Ultimately an incompetent system feeds into the hiring process. ATS has evolved over time to perform semantic searches and has also leveraged artificial intelligence, despite which ATS has failed to filter talent efficiently. The Applicant Tracking System remains a leaky funnel as it fails to measure behavioural attributes and undermines the importance of cultural adaptability, creative talent, and problem-solving skills while selecting candidates. In a nutshell, ATS is a thing of the past, and it's time recruiters up their game by fixing the recruitment processes and move on from CVs. A fixed recruitment process entails smart systems that evaluate a candidate's knowledge without bias and make an effort to know the hire in a real sense. It is unwise to rely on the ATS software and CVs to construct the workforce of an organization. It is indeed time for the HR teams to move on from the ATS. The future of any organisation rides on its ability to hire top talent. Leveraging new age technology equips organisations to hire smarter and better. Without an efficient selection recruitment process in place, hiring becomes a tedious and cumbersome process and finding the right talent remains a challenge. Recruiters are on the constant lookout for efficient ways to hire. However, the question is, is there an efficient way to hire?

Of Course, there is.

Easy Talent's SmartForm makes for an optimal hiring process experience. It automates the application process and enables you to create questions that filter out unsuitable candidates.

SmartForm relies on three parameters for screening candidates: (1) Demographic criteria: EasyTalent provides default demographic questions, and also enables talent acquisition teams to create questions that are relevant to their organisation.

(2) Domain criteria: Applicants can be served questions that will granularly test their skill sets, digital competencies and domain expertise.

(3) Decision Criteria: Knock-out questions enable HR managers to filter-out applicants that do not match the selection criteria.

These forms enable organisations to create their own ‘organisation-specific’ questions. HR managers get to ‘ask’ questions that are relevant to their organisation or job posting.

SmartForms enable HR managers to ‘ask’ questions that are relevant to their organisation or job posting, for screening the candidates. These application forms with built-in ‘organization-context-based’ questions can be posted on their career portal and social media handles. Based on the candidate’s responses the system generates SmartLinks (adaptive-questions) to probe the candidate further.

Thus Smart Application Forms, enable recruiters to collect valid information from candidates. Further, it ranks shortlisted applicants based on the ideal persona.Can an ATS probe beneath the surface, to predict future job performance?

Learn more about SmartForms here